What The Science Says: Losing Fat Without Starving Yourself

The video above is of a British television show that follows a medical journalist as he investigates what has been scientifically proven to work for losing weight without going hungry. Many of the the clinically validated tips listed below will seem familiar to many people, but watching the investigation of why the tips work is quite inspiring.

I found the segment for item #4 to be quite fascinating. Years ago I lost a lot of weight counting calories and keeping a food diary. This was at a time when I thought that because of my age that my metabolism had slowed down enough to make that impossible. Recording what I ate in a log and measuring my food in calories showed me that I habitually underestimated how much I ate. It also taught me that even “healthy” food still had energy ( as measured in calories ) and that if my energy intake was more than my energy output, I would not lose weight.

Many people emphatically claim that they “eat healthy”, exercise, and do not eat a lot, but that they just can’t lose fat, probably due to a “slow metabolism”.

In the segment on #4, the show got such a person, a British celebrity, to volunteer to keep a video diary and then a written diary of what she ate. During this time the clinicians also had her drink “doubly labeled water”, water with isotopes mixed in that allowed clinicians to measure how much energy she expended and how much energy ( measured in calories ) she took in.

The clinicians not only discovered that she did not have a slow metabolism at all – quite an average one, but that she also underestimated and under-recorded her energy ( measured in calories ) intake. She was never able to lose weight, because she was simply eating much more than she thought she was eating.

I’ve read a number of times before that most people, even knowledgeable ones, will habitually underestimate how much food they eat, but the video demonstration of this fact was quite dramatic and inspiring. It is just like a check book. You are always shocked how much you are spending once you begin writing things down.